Samsung N510 may use ION LE platform, N508 and N511 may be on the way

Hot on the heels of news that the Samsung N510 will be available in the US starting next month come two intriguing bits of information about the first NVIDIA ION-powered 11.6 inch laptop from Samasung:

Netbook News Italia discovered a product listing indicating that the netbook will use the ION LE platform rather than the standard NVIDIA ION. What’s the difference? ION LE is designed specifically for Windows XP and includes support for DirectX 9, but not DirectX 10 which is only available in Windows Vista and 7. In other words, it’s a bit cheaper and you won’t get as much performance you might expect if you upgrade the operating system.

Netbook Choice uncovered a document indicating that the Samsung N510 may not be the only model in the company’s N5xx series. The document also lists N511 and N508 models.

It’s not clear how the N511 and N508 would differ from the N510. Netbook Choice suggests that the screen size or processor could be different in one or both of these models. If it turns out that the Samsung N510 really does use the ION LE platform, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these other models includes the standard NVIDIA ION platform with DirectX 10 support. After all, these new models haven’t been officially announced yet, so they probably won’t hit the streets for a few more months. And Windows 7, which supports DirectX 10, and which runs much better on netbooks than Windows Vista, is due out on October 22nd.

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nVidia will make no money from me by touting artificially crippled products.

please samsung, please use the real Ion and put it together with a decent CPU (Read: not Atom)

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9 years ago

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wanorris

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I think “artificially crippled” is a bit harsh. A kinder way to put it would be “price point segmentation” — they made more powerful and less powerful versions of chips to hit different price points.

The CULV chips in Acer’s Timeline systems and other thin and light notebooks are Core 2 Solos, which are made by disabling one of the two cores on a perfectly good Core 2 Duo. That allows them to sell it cheaper without slashing the price on all the Core 2 Duos.

It’s just how semiconductor companies do business.

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9 years ago

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Raziel

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I wonder if it could handle anything DirectX 10 related anyways.

Unless something has changed, back when DirectX 10 was first released it would choke out on full blown nVidia GeForce 8400’s and 8500’s desktop cards.

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9 years ago

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pauli

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